


Out of the Frying Pan

by orphan_account



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Gen, MasterChef AU, i don't know either tbh, what the hell you ask?, yeah i went there
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2018-06-20
Packaged: 2019-05-25 22:55:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,571
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14987369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: The clever thing about this competition is that you don’t just win Immunity by producing better food than everyone else - you win Immunity by producing better food than a world class professional chef - and Annie Leonhardt is just that.Or: The Masterchef AU that no one asked for.





	Out of the Frying Pan

“You know, for someone who  _ didn’t  _ win an Immunity Pin, you look pretty giddy.”

Armin snorts, but he tries to wipe the ridiculous grin off his face anyway. It’s been a hell of a day, and, yeah, okay, he might  _ not _ have won an Immunity Pin, but he’s still pretty pleased. He coughs and tries to focus as Hanji the Production Manager taps the edge of the lens. “Sorry,” he says. “I can’t help it.”

Hanji smirks a little and adjusts the camera. “Why don’t you tell us about it?”

“I - uh -” Armin clears his throat. “Where do you want me to start?”

“How about when you found out you’d be cooking against Annie?”

_ That  _ makes Armin giggle a little. It’s pretty pathetic. He can’t even imagine how stupid he must have looked to her when she walked in. The clever thing about this competition is that you don’t  _ just _ win Immunity by producing better food than everyone else - you win Immunity by producing better food than a world class professional chef - and Annie Leonhardt is just that. More, even.

She’s only nineteen - older than him by  _ half a year _ \- and she’s already better than most people who have been cooking longer than she’s even been alive. She and her father run a fine dining restaurant in Sina - one so fancy, you’d need a reservation months in advance just to get in. By some miracle, Armin’s grandfather had gotten them a reservation there once -  _ once  _ \- through a friend of a friend of a friend. He’d caught a glimpse of her at the Saute Station as a waiter walked backwards through the kitchen doors balancing their meals in his arms, and Armin could swear on his life that he’d never tasted food so delicious.

“Well?” prompts Hanji.

“Well.” Armin swallows another giggle. 

  
  
  


 

“You look pretty comfy in those chef whites,” Erwin had said, looking pleased.

Armin grinned, glancing down at the chef jacket and at his name, embroidered neatly under the first button on his left breast. “Feeling pretty comfy too, I think.” 

“Ready to meet the professional you’re supposed to face off against?”

Armin had sucked in a breath. “As I’ll ever be,” he’d said, rubbing his hands together.

Erwin had smirked at him and shared a glance with the other judges. “I’m sure you’ve heard of her,” he’d said, clasping his hands behind his back. “She’s learned from the very best both here and in Marley; she’s won multiple international awards including last year’s Young Chef of the Year award; and now she’s taking the reins from her father at Sina’s premiere restaurant  _ Crystalline  _  - ”

“Oh no.” Erwin didn’t really need to say anything else - Armin’s mouth had gone dry, and he could feel his lips cracking as a ridiculous, terrified grin tugged at his features. Up on the gantry, the other contestants looked varying shades of nervous and delighted for him, but he’d caught Eren’s eye and felt his stomach drop as Eren gave him two thumbs up and mouthed either  _ “Good luck,”  _ or “ _ You’re fucked,”  _ (Armin’s still not sure which) with a nervous smile. 

“Please welcome: Annie Leonhardt!”

The warehouse doors swung open, and Annie Leonhardt strode into the kitchen looking crisp and clean and professional in her  _ Crystalline  _ apron and like she could kick his ass without batting an eyelash.

 

 

  
  
“Terrified, I guess,” Armin tells Hanji. “Annie is  _ world class _ \- you can tell just by looking at her that she didn’t just learn from the best - she might as well be, you know? Before I joined the competition, I learned to cook from Google and Youtube.” He laughs a little. “She walked in and it was just like… yeah, I have no chance.”

Hanji nods, studying the little screen on the other side of the camera. “You had the advantage, though.”

“It didn’t make me feel better,” chuckles Armin. Honestly, at the time, it had made him feel worse, because even though Erwin Smith, Dot Pixis, and Nile Dok had  _ told  _ him he could pick what to cook with, and that Annie would have less time than he did, it still felt like the advantage belonged to her. Annie cooks for one of the best restaurants in the world, and if there’s one thing she’s already good at (beyond cooking), it’s cooking under pressure. “I did my best to play to my strengths,” he offers weakly. “I mean I had to make a choice between Eastern and Western cuisine and I’ve always been better at Eastern, so I went with that.”

 

 

 

Even with Levi mentoring and offering him advice, Armin still felt unfairly screwed over by this turn of events. He’d felt pretty confident after winning the first couple of rounds of today’s Immunity challenge, but seeing Annie walk through the doors felt like a punch in the gut.

“What are you cooking?” Levi had asked, as Armin fumbled with a bowl of chicken thigh cutlets.

“Uh.” Armin had laughed nervously. “I make a pretty good Pad Thai chicken?”

Levi cocked his head at him. “Bit simple, don’t you think?”

“I’ll make my own noodles,” Armin had told him, reaching for the box of staples under the stove. “Maybe pair it with some salad dressed with carrot and ginger dressing. And I’ve got some ideas for the sauce - maybe give it a bit more of a kick than usual - just to make it a bit more interesting.”

“Hm.” Levi clucked his tongue. “Better work quickly,” he’d said. “That’s a lot to do in seventy-five minutes.”

 

 

 

“It went pretty well for the first fifteen,” Armin tells Hanji. “I was really focused and everything. Rice noodles are really weird to make - you have to rest the fluid before you stick it all in the pan to make it sort of solidify. Anyway, yeah, so I had that resting, and I put the chicken in the wok - and then Annie’s time started.”

Hanji raises an eyebrow at him. “What happened then?”

Armin flushes and ducks his face away from the camera. “Do we really have to do this  _ now? _ ”

“We always do this straight after the cook, you know that. Otherwise you forget all the details.”

Armin sighs. “Well. I just got distracted, I guess. Everything kind of went to shit after that.”

  
  
  


 

“Leonhardt!” barked Levi. “Your time starts now!”

Armin had glanced up for a second - a  _ second _ \- he could swear that was all it was - but it didn’t occur to him until after he could smell the chicken burning that it was a  _ lot  _ longer than that. All he knew was that he couldn’t take his eyes off Annie as she strode out from the stores cupboard, studied the pantry he’d picked, and got to work.

She was  _ flawless. _ She moved with a precision and grace that he never imagined was even possible. She was a prima ballerina or a first chair violinist or something - whatever she was, she was an  _ artist _ in her own element and she was mesmerising to watch.

 

 

 

“I don’t think I’d ever seen something so beautiful,” he murmurs.

Hanji pauses and glances at him from behind the camera. “Um.”

Armin flushes again. “We can cut this all later, right?”

“Sure,” says Hanji, but a smirk creeps onto her lips as she sits back and motions for him to continue. “Is - uh - is that why your chicken was dry?”

“Pretty much,” he mumbles. “Just - every now and then I’d look over at her and I just couldn’t take my eyes off her, you know? Next thing I know, all the chicken pieces are black on one side I have to start again.”

 

 

 

“Arlert, what the hell are you doing?” Levi had snapped. “You know what’s at stake here, don’t you?”

Armin had jumped. The first thing that registered (after Levi slammed a hand against his bench) was the way Eren and Mikasa were screaming at him to pay attention from the gantry. The second thing that registered was the smell of burnt chicken. “Crap,” he mumbled. “Crap, crap, crap.”

Stir-frying thigh cutlets are pretty hard to screw up to begin with, and the fact that Armin was screwing them up was a hell of a wake up call. His first batch was unusable, and he glanced at the time, felt the first stirrings of panic in his system, and sprinted for the pantry for another handful of chicken thigh cutlets.

He caught Annie’s eyes on him on his way back, and she had one eyebrow raised and something like an amused smirk on her lips.

 

 

 

“Interesting,” says Hanji, suddenly looking far too invested in this situation than she should be allowed. “Have you - uh - have you always had a crush on Annie?”

“ _ No _ ,” snaps Armin. “And - it’s not a  _ crush _ . It’s - it - uh - I just  _ admire _ her. A lot. I’ve seen her cook once at her dad’s restaurant and it was for like a second. Today was the first day I’d ever seen her in person beyond that.”

“I see,” says Hanji. “So this is more like a love at first sight thing.”

Armin gapes at her. His face feels very warm and it feels like he might be having palpitations, but he ignores it in favour of looking scandalized. “It is  _ not,” _ he hisses. “It’s - it’s nothing like that, okay? It’s just - have you  _ seen  _ her work?”

“I filmed her, in fact,” says Hanji, looking amused. “You’ll notice neither I nor the rest of the crew messed up our jobs while she was working today.”

Armin scowls. “Look, if you’re gonna spend this interview making fun of me, I can refuse to finish it. It’s within my rights as a contestant to not deal with this. And, for the record, you don’t have my permission to show this on TV unless it’s cut  _ extensively _ first.”

“All right, all  _ right _ ,” grumbles Hanji, but the grin doesn’t fade from her features. “So the rest of your cook doesn’t go well.”

“No,” says Armin. “It doesn’t.”

  
  
  


 

“Two minutes!” Levi yelled. Time in this kitchen had never  _ ever _ been a friend, and he’d stared down at his empty bowl and nearly had a heart attack when he realized he hadn’t even started  _ plating. _

He could hear Eren and Mikasa screaming at him to “GET IT ON THE FUCKING PLATE!”, and in his hurry, he’d knocked a significant portion of his cooked noodles out of the wok. He swore loudly as it fell over his shoes but there was no time to dick around anymore - if it didn’t go on the plate now, it didn’t go on it at all.

On the other bench, he caught Annie’s eye again. Her bench was clean; her dish looked refined and modern - she didn’t even have a hair out of place. She smirked at him, wiping a couple of rogue splotches of sauce off her plate with the tea towel hanging off the tie of her apron, and stepped back as Levi and the gantry started a countdown from ten.

“Shit,” mumbled Armin, sliding his Pad Thai on the plate. “Shit, shit, shit - ”

  
  
  


 

“It was a mess.” Armin leans back in his chair with a sigh. He runs a hand through his hair, trying to ignore the way Hanji’s smirk refuses to go away.

  
  
  


 

“Three!”

“Armin, the crushed peanuts!”

“Two!”

“C’mon Ar!”

“One!”

Armin dumped the last of his chopped shallots over the top of his noodles in what he hoped looked at at least elegant and stumbled backwards just as Levi called “Time!”. He saw Annie stride purposefully around her bench, looking curiously at his dish, and Armin felt his mouth go dry.

“What’d you cook?” she asked.

“Er - Just - um - just a Pad Thai, you know, nothing too special.”

She snorted at him, and she leaned over his bench to study the dish. “Don’t sell yourself short,” she said mildly. “It smells pretty good.”

Armin flushed, wiping his hands off on his chef jacket. “Er - thanks, I guess.”

 

 

  
Armin heaves a sigh. It comes out a little dreamily, and he coughs to cover it up. “Totally worth it, I think.”

“Worth it?” asks Hanji.

Armin chuckles. “Yeah. To have been able to cook against Annie like that and to learn from her like that? What an opportunity.”

Hanji pauses. “You - uh - wanna tell us what happened while you were waiting for you dishes to be scored?”

Armin sighs again.

 

 

 

“Sooo… Young Chef of the Year last year, huh?”

God, even in her downtime, she looked professional. Annie sat on the other side of the waiting room from him, her back straight, and her hands folded neatly in her lap. She shrugged a little. “It’s not as big a deal as you think.”

“Are you kidding?” Armin had asked. “It’s amazing! I mean, like, I’ve learned a ton from being in this competition but compared to you? Seriously -  _ wow. _ ”

Annie had laughed. The sound made Armin’s ears feel warm. Even her laugh was lovely. “You’re too nice,” she’d said. “I think you’re being a little hard on yourself. Like - my dad’s been teaching me to cook since I was six. It’s the same as anything, I guess - if someone’d been swimming since they were six, they’d probably win something like Young Swimmer of the Year too. It’s just practise, y’know?”

“I suppose,” said Armin. He’d scratched his cheek a little. “Still, I can’t tell you how amazing it was to cook against you. Every time I looked up to watch you, I learned something new.”

“You were watching me, were you?”

Armin blanched. “Er - I mean - not - not in a weird way, I swear -”

Annie had smirked at him. There was something in her grin that was a little  _ too  _ knowing, and Armin wasn’t sure why at the time, but it made him feel more uneasy than the days when he had to  _ watch  _ the judges taste his dish.

“I didn’t say it was,” said Annie. Her smirk was still there.

 

 

 

“Sounds like you had a pleasant chat,” says Hanji. 

Armin nods at her. “She was great to talk to,” he tells her. “I almost forgot we were there because the judges were tasting our dishes.”

“Uh-huh. And after your dishes got scored?”

 

 

  
  
Ultimately, it wasn’t a huge surprise to hear that he’d lost. He hadn’t really expected to win against someone like Annie, but the experience was a pleasure all the same.

Annie shook his hand. Her grip was firm and her smile was small, but he felt her press something against his palm as she pulled her hand away. It wasn’t until after she left, as they were leaving the kitchen, that he opened and looked at it.

 

 

 

He holds it up for Hanji to see.

“Is that her  _ number _ ?”

Armin nods and grins dumbly at it. “You know, the funny thing is that I didn’t even ask her for it,” he says. “I’m pretty sure she knew the whole time.”

“Knew what?” presses Hanji.

Armin makes a face at her. “Oh, like you haven’t been giving me crap about it this whole interview. At least she didn’t think it was creepy.”

Hanji laughs at him. “It’s only creepy if she doesn’t like you back. And she pretty clearly likes you back.”

“Heh.” Armin flushes again, but he looks down at the little slip of paper and at Annie’s spindly handwriting and grins. “You’re going to edit the crap out of this interview, right?”

Hanji smirks. “Sure thing, kid.”

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I wish I had a better excuse for this than "I binged Masterchef" and "I miss this ship" but here we are.
> 
> 2) Idk what US Masterchef is like but Australian Masterchef is actually pretty likeable as a reality tv show because there's no cattiness and everyone is there to learn and supportive of each other. The judges know when to tell you you're wrong and when to tell you to not give up. You don't win Immunity by being better than the other contestants - you win Immunity if you can cook better than a professional chef in a blind tasting. So yeah, tldr, this is based on the format of Australian Masterchef. I don't imagine US Masterchef is all that different.
> 
> 3) I too have no idea why this fic exists, like y'all can ask me if I had a plan for this but in all honesty this wanted to be written and it wrote itself. I was just along for the ride. Believe me. I know it's stupid. I make no excuses for it.


End file.
